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News of Threats Leads to Jabs
At Romania's Defense Chief

A Wall Street Journal Europe NEWS ROUNDUP

Updated May 14, 2002 10:57 a.m. ET

Romanian opposition politicians and a human-rights group criticized the country's defense minister Monday over reports that the ministry threatened journalists who reprinted an article suggesting that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was suspicious of Romania's secret police. But some diplomats and officials said the complaints may be politically motivated.

The April 30 Wall Street Journal story described NATO's demand that Romania thoroughly screen former communist-era secret police agents who serve in the government and who would have access to NATO's military secrets if Romania joins the alliance. The story was reprinted or quoted last week in some Romanian newspapers.

Newspapers that reprinted the story said they received a statement Thursday warning those responsible that "life is short, and your health has too high a price to be endangered by debating highly emotional subjects." The defense ministry press office on Monday confirmed it had sent the statement.

Opposition politicians roundly criticized the threats, and Monica Macovei, chairman of the Association for the Defense of Human Rights in Romania, called for Defense Minister Ion Mircea Pascu to resign. She said she would forward the statement to the Council of Europe and NATO, as well as the European Union, which Romania hopes to join before the end of the decade.

But late Monday, a Western diplomat who had spoken with the defense ministry expressed the belief that the uproar was rooted in comments made by Mr. Pascu, which weren't intended to be taken seriously. As well, the diplomat said, "There's some reason to believe that the [attention] given to the issue by local newspapers, most of them antigovernment, was politically motivated."

News of Threats Leads to Jabs
At Romania's Defense Chief

Romanian opposition politicians and a human-rights group criticized the country's defense minister Monday over reports that the ministry threatened journalists who reprinted an article suggesting that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was suspicious of Romania's secret police.